Megawatt charging as an enabler for battery-electric long-haul trucks – is that enough?

With a share of 38 % the road-based transport logistics cause a considerable proportion of the total CO2 emissions of the transport sector [1]. The decarbonization of the commercial vehicle sector is the declared goal of MAN Truck & Bus SE. Battery-electric vehicles have a very high savings potential due to their high well-to-wheel efficiency [2]. MAN Truck & Bus is therefore focusing on the development of the new eTruck for heavy-duty long-distance transport, which will be handed over to the first customers in 2024 [3]. A central enabler for this way of electrification is the Megawatt Charging System Standard (MCS). Based on the CSS standard, MCS will allow charging powers of over 1 MW in the near future [4]. Heavy commercial vehicles with battery capacities of over 500 kWh will thus achieve daily ranges of up to 1000 km. While the MAN eTruck will be available in the coming year, the expansion of the charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles is still in its infancy, although several initiatives are currently being launched and new players are investing in this market. For long-distance transport with typical daily distances of 650 to 700 km, battery-electric trucks (BET) with battery capacities of 500 kWh and 600 kW average charging power have time losses of about 20 min on average during driving breaks. With higher charging capacities, these disadvantages can already be solved with an initial charging network, making battery-electric long-distance transport vehicles competitive to internal combustion engine trucks (ICET). The competitiveness in terms of total cost of ownership is already given today with industrial electricity prices and will increase further in the future through intelligent grid integration. The NEFTON research project [5] is making a decisive contribution to this with the development of an energy-efficient 1 MW charging ecosystem including an MAN eTruck, which will be demonstrated in a showcase in early 2024. Additional, charging components with charging currents of 3000 A will be tested on a test bench, enabling an electric truck to be fully charged in 15 min. Furthermore, theoretical potentials for integrating BETs into the power grid and with bidirectional charging will be analyzed here. Especially trucks in distribution traffic offer high potentials for bidirectional charging with standing times of more than 50 %.